Jukebox the Ghost in the Orphanage

Producer/engineer Dan Romer hosted pop band Jukebox the Ghost in his studio, The Orphanage (L.A.), to make their self-titled fourth album, out now on Yeproc. “The boys would bring in demos that they made in their home studios,” Romer says. “We then spent about a week changing the tempos and arrangements, essentially doing a group remix of the song. We arranged all the drums, synths, and pianos in MIDI, and did all the guitars direct, just to get all the tempos and arrangement to a place where we were happy, before we laid anything down that we planned to keep.”

Romer’s studio is built around Pro Tools HDX, along with Burl B2 Bomber conversion and a Dangerous D-Box summing mixer/monitoring system. After fine-tuning all those MIDI arrangements, he and the band tracked real drums, amped guitars, and keeper vocals (all the synth parts are soft synths), but they determined that some of the MIDI drums either sounded better, or could add dimension to the real drums. “We ended up with an amalgamation,” Romer says. “Some parts are pure, real drums; some are part real and part samples. For example, the kick drum in one song might be sampled, but the cymbals and snare might be real. Any time it was fake drums, Jesse [Kristin], the drummer, and I would sit down and arrange them. Whatever sounded the best for that song was what we ended up doing.”